68 pages • 2 hours read
Light from Uncommon Stars
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Literary Devices
Setting (Los Angeles)
The setting of Light From Uncommon Stars, the San Gabriel Valley, is an important element of the story. More than simply the backdrop for the plot, it acts as a living canvas upon which Aoki explores some of her most important themes: change, transition, immigration, and legacy.
Several times throughout the book, Aoki gives detailed descriptions of the many restaurants and businesses that populate the city, paying particular attention to the food that is served and the families that have come and gone over the years. While some parts of the city are constantly changing, to the point that “change had become, well, mundane” (34), other parts of the city are “curiously resistant to change” (34), remaining as familiar landmarks for long-time residents. In the setting of San Gabriel Valley, change and stasis are blended together. Examples include Starrgate Donuts, formerly known as El Monte Donuts and owned by the Thamavuong couple, and Caputo’s pizza, which retained its name even as ownership and the type of food it sells (now Asian rather than Italian) changed over the years. As Shizuka tells Tremon, “Times have changed, the food has changed. But people still know Caputo’s” (142). This sort of immortality, based in community and legacy, contrasts with the self-centered, empty immortality of fame supposedly promised by demons like Tremon.
Structure
Light From Uncommon Stars is structured in a unique way. While it has traditional chapter and section breaks, the prose in each section is frequently punctuated by empty spaces that do not indicate a change in scene:
Katrina froze.
‘You! Girl or boy?’ the old lady asked gruffly.
In a panic, Katrina turned and rushed down the hill.
What was she doing here? What could she have been thinking? (53).
These empty spaces serve various purposes: to create a dramatic beat or a shift in tone, to signal a change in point of view, to jump to a flashback mid-scene, or to reflect the ups and downs of the characters’ thoughts and emotions. Aoki uses this device to give her prose a flow similar to music, with the empty spaces acting like the lines that separate measures in sheet music. The purpose of this technique ties explicitly into the theme of The Inevitability of Change and Transition in Shizuka’s speech about musical sections in Chapter 33.
Shizuka tells Lan that, much as musicians often learn to play music section by section, people learn to live their lives the same way. But “sections change keys, tempos. They change moods. Timing…Some melodies don’t resolve in an expected way. Some don’t resolve at all” (313). Shizuka explains that this inconsistency makes people uncomfortable and afraid to play those sections. In the same way, people fear changes or differences in their own world. That said, Shizuka imagines a music with no sections:
[E]ven as the piece progresses from season to season, from movement to movement, there is no anxiety about how the next section may or may not fit. Instead, the whole piece is always realized and complete—in that note. That chord. That rest. That ornament (314).
In this moment, Aoki reveals that this very novel incorporates this same idea: [I]t breaks into sections, but each part flows into the next as part of a seamless whole. This structure, in turn, symbolizes the possibility of a world where people recognize their shared humanity rather than dividing themselves from others.
Flashbacks
Flashbacks are scattered throughout Light From Uncommon Stars, most frequently showing up in scenes where the characters are listening to music, playing music, or eating food. Both music and food often bring the characters back to an emotional moment from childhood, whether happy, sad, traumatic, or bittersweet. Some flashbacks provide insight into the trauma that drives the characters’ actions. Others hint at the secrets characters may be hiding from one another, such as Lan’s PTSD-like flashbacks to her escape from the Galactic Empire or Lucy’s flashbacks to her grandfather working on cursed violins in the workshop.
One particularly noteworthy use of flashbacks occurs in Chapter 14, in which Shizuka and Katrina have parallel flashbacks as Shizuka leads Katrina in her violin practice. Katrina recalls a time as a young child when her cousins were mocking her, and her father flew into a violent rage. Though the scene does not reach its completion, it is implied that this is the moment that her father smashed her first violin; Katrina stops following Shizuka’s music because she does not want to relive that trauma. Simultaneously, Shizuka flashes back to one of her previous performances in West Berlin, with her memory interrupted by Katrina’s refusal to continue. While the significance of Shizuka’s memory is not clear at first, it is later revealed to be a flashback to her final performance on the night that she almost sold her soul to Tremon—a performance that was also cut short when Shizuka panicked and ran off the stage. Katrina’s cry of, “Please, Miss Satomi, there has to be a better way!” (130), which intrudes into Shizuka’s flashback, foreshadows Katrina eventually helping Shizuka discover a better way to save her music—one that doesn’t require Shizuka to sacrifice Katrina to Hell.
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